


When the Levee Breaks

by thermodynamic (euphoriaspill)



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Cocaine, Drug Dealing, F/M, Fatherhood, Gangs, Infidelity, Latino Character, POV First Person, Redemption, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29457864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/thermodynamic
Summary: Curly has done a lot of bad things in his life, but this might just be the worst. And now the consequences have come knocking.
Relationships: Curly Shepard/Original Female Character(s), Tim Shepard/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	When the Levee Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> ... So Dani was introduced in No Strings Attached as Michael's half-sister, without a ton of explanation as to how she came into the world, except that it wasn't good. Thus, here's Curly's attempt at justifying himself. Warning upfront for everything that entails.

_If being wrong's a crime, I'm serving forever_

_If being strong's your kind, I need help here with this feather_

_If being afraid is a crime, we hang side by side_

_At the swinging party down the line_

— Swingin' Party, The Replacements

* * *

_May 1977_

" _Feliz cumple_ ," Sergio says, clinking his beer bottle against mine, and I'm reminded once more that somehow I've made it to twenty-seven. A lot longer than I ever made plans to live, that's for sure, but it's not such a lucky age. "And many more, huh?"

Instead of answering him, I cut a line with my car key, in a well-practiced motion. It hasn't been a party for me for a long time without snorting something. Or lately, a day. I don't like coming down— that's how Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died, not when they got high, when they went to sleep. I bend over the bar and inhale it like a vacuum, and it only takes the space of a second for me to feel better again, or at least for an electric explosion to go off in my brain; I sniff hard, wipe the snot off with the back of my hand, then massage the traces of the dust into my gums for good measure. "You got a present for me, or what?"

"Look—" his voice drops down to a whisper faint enough I have to strain to hear it, and he doesn't move to do a line himself, though I wave the key at him. He's one of those annoying-ass 'don't get high on your own supply' types who says he smokes pot for 'medicinal reasons'. "I shouldn't be bringin' this up on your birthday. I might be jumpin' to conclusions, _sabes_? But I can't just sit here and pretend nothin' is goin' on... I don't want you to hear it from someone else."

He's full of shit. Sergio thrives off stirring up drama more than a whole high school girls' social club. "Quit dragging it out already, and tell me what's goin' on." I check my Rolex; it's past ten, and I'm still high as a kite in this dive, probably not coming down any time soon. I should be at home with my family, not listening to who bought whose baby a cheap christening gift and who won't share their propane grill for an upcoming block party. Normally I'm all over outfit gossip— it's good to know, and I have an ear for it— but lately I've lost my taste for being everyone's professional peacekeeper. Wish they could manage to sort things out themselves, for once.

"You remember Sheila?"

My heart pounds so hard against my chest cavity that I'm afraid it's going to land on the table, bloody and pulsating, give me away. Not from the coke, neither. I'm careful to slide my face into a neutral expression that's second nature by now, furrow my brow with the same confusion I'd have if you mentioned a _Starsky & Hutch_ episode I missed. "No, who's that?"

"Don't bullshit me, I was _there_." At least Sergio's had enough empathy for me to make sure we're in a reasonably deserted corner, that KC and the Sunshine Band's blaring loud enough to cover up what he's saying as he leans forward. "Are we gonna dance around this until you cop to it? You been keepin' up with how she's doin' at all?"

"No, I haven't," I say like I'm clipping off the syllables with garden shears. I don't know jack shit about Sheila, or care. "I ain't spoken to her in five years. She could've died or skipped town or joined the circus, that's not my problem."

"Even if she's walkin' around O'Brien Park with a kid that looks just like you?"

I choke on the beer I took a sip of to try to steady myself, cough so hard I almost vomit all over the bar; Sergio cringes away from me. "Excuse me?"

"Look," he says, scratching the back of his shaven scalp, "I figured at first you might... have an arrangement or somethin' going on with her. I didn't want to get mixed up in your business. But if you really didn't—"

An _arrangement_ — the one Sergio's got, fair few guys I know, too. Wife and kids set up in the halfway-decent part of town, mistress in an apartment on the opposite side, with an allowance, a nice car, and shopping trips to Dallas every month. "I ain't that kind of scumbag," I say, my mouth, as usual, running ahead of my brain.

He shoves at my chest with the flat of his hand. As shocked as I am right now, I almost topple right off the barstool, though I'm a pretty big guy. "We're _both_ ain't-shit cheaters, man, so you think you're better than me now?" He looks real indignant, too, working himself up as he glowers at me. "At least I pay for my kids, _all_ my kids. They got the best of everything."

"I didn't know I _had_ another fucking kid to pay for in the first place." I feel like I'm floating around in the middle of a nightmare, the whole room distorted. "Are you sure it's— is it even a girl or a boy?"

"Girl, but you Shepards got strong genes, she looks just like you same as Mike does— or like Angela, some. Stopped me dead on the street, man, I'm tellin' you she's your carbon copy." Angela is going to castrate me with a rusty spoon when she hears about this. "Couldn't see too well from where I was, but I think she's got y'all's eyes. That weird dark blue no one else has."

* * *

 _I didn't leave the house planning to cheat on my wife, ruin my marriage, and have a love child, you know? I don't think anyone ever does. Shitty choices are like going down a ladder, you make them one rung at a time until you hit rock bottom. I just needed a break, is all— if I'm being honest with myself, which I so rarely am, Christ, I needed a break from_ her _. Which is why I'm nursing a vodka sour at a neighborhood bar. Sergio, Javier, and Pedro are over by the pool table, with girls who are pretending to be too dumb to figure out how to use the cue properly, but even if they weren't, they're not the kind of buddies who would try to save me from myself. One thing Tim and I have in common— we've never been great at cultivating friends who aren't lackeys._

 _She's not exactly what you'd call smoking hot, but she's pretty, and something about her hooks my gaze before I can look away. Long, blonde hair that falls loose down her back, with colored beads woven into the ends, a figure like Twiggy's, wrists so thin they're liable to break under the weight of all her bangles. Later, when I'm staring up at the ceiling at night, I'll wonder what the hell it was about her, and the only answer I'll be able to come up with is the word_ fragile _. Sitting there all alone, needed Daddy to take care of her. Tim and I always had that whole knight in shining armor complex going on, since we were kids trying to save our mama from herself. Always gotta be the fucking hero._

_But maybe she's not as naive as I've painted her, in hindsight. She sees me seeing her, she looks right back. "Hey," she says, and scoots her chair a little closer to mine. "You here by yourself, or you waitin' for someone?"_

_First step. "By myself, unless you count them clowns in the back." I don't particularly want to. Somehow I'm still convincing myself that I'm just being friendly. I've flirted with a lot of girls on jobs, can get information out of them pretty easy. The trick is to talk to them like they're people and not stare at their tits the whole time. It'd be rude to tell her to buzz off, flash my wedding band and go back to moping into my drink. At least she's a distraction from the whirlwind of my thoughts. "What about you?"_

_She sweeps her hair over her shoulder and starts braiding a segment— it smells good, wafting over to_ _me_ , _herbal shampoo and something grassier. She's wearing a bandana as a top with no bra. "Same." She tilts her head. "What's your sign? You look like a Gemini."_

_The name on her birth certificate is Sheila, but she says she goes by Blossom now, that Sheila 'sounds like the essence of suburban America'. I never got all this hippie stuff, but it makes me think of Ponyboy, who would cast all that peace, love, and nonviolence aside and beat me to death with a tire iron if he saw me right now. And after I explain him to her, I order us another round, which leads into—_

_"It's just so fucking hard," I say once I'm on my third drink, and the words spill out of me like I dropped a bag of marbles onto the floor. It feels good to tell a stranger, someone who doesn't know everything that keeps me manacled to my past, and she's paying pretty rapt attention. I'm usually on the receiving end of this. "I love her so fucking much, but half the time I swear she's got one foot out the door— I mean, for fuck's sake, she literally runs out the door when she's hacked off at me. You remember that Stills song,_ if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with? _" I strum an imaginary guitar for emphasis, sing-song the words. I am quite drunk at this point, drunker than I should be, as a six foot guy who, if I dare say, invests a decent amount of time into lifting weights. "If her first boyfriend hadn't died... Christ, they might've ended up... I dunno. Married. With a kid, the way we are now. I can't imagine it, but they might've."_

 _There's a lot I could've gone into, her constant drinking, her paranoia, her bad Curtis temper that she'd inherited in spades, her reckless, downright suicidal inability to admit when she'd made a bad judgement call— which was the one thing about her that really drove me up the fucking wall._ _But I still loved her more than anything. What hurt me the most was how easy it was for her to cut me out of her life. How even now, in this place at my lowest point, she still ate me up whole._

_I can't believe my best line of seduction was complaining about my wife. But Sheila's crawled into my lap now, her arms laced around my neck, and I'm not thinking about any consequences, because even my second grade teacher claimed I never do. I'm thinking that she's hot and she's not wearing a bra and she's grinding against my crotch with her skirt hiked up and her mouth tastes like vodka mixed with too-sweet lemonade and I can do what I want and no one can stop me, no one's fixing to either. And what she says next seals my stupid, stupid fate. "Why don't we get out of here, and I can take care of you a little, huh?"_

_I'm not reminiscing about the way we fucked. Christ knows Tim used to go through chicks like underwear back in the day, but I can't really do it unless I'm in love with the other person— I mean, clearly I_ can _, I just don't see much of a point, jacking off inside somebody else. What she stroked real good all night was my ego. And when I wake up the next morning beside her, a dull headache pounding against my forehead and the tacky taste of stale booze in my mouth, twisted up in this joint's dirty sheets, I guess I can rely on my ego to keep me warm at night from now on._

_I bolt out of that bed like there's a rat in there, start digging around in the blankets for my boxers, which wakes her up too. "What's the matter?" she says sleepily, her mascara crumbling under her eyes. "Where are you goin' in such a hurry, I thought we could—"_

_"This didn't happen." Soda might be out of commission and Ponyboy might have skipped town, but Heavyweight Curtis is still around, and all six feet two inches of him is about to bury me in a shallow grave if he ever finds out about this._

_"What are you talkin' about?" She looks so genuinely confused and hurt, there's no way she can be putting on a show right now. "I really thought there was somethin' between us—"_

_"I'm_ married _." The weight of just what the fuck I've done is hitting me like a Mack truck going a hundred miles an hour— my wedding band gleams, where the sunlight strikes against it from the tattered blinds. I pick it up from the nightstand and twirl it around in front of her, slowly slip it back onto my finger, though I sure as hell don't deserve to be wearing it now. "Listen to me," I say, because she does not seem to be grasping this fast enough even for me to be comfortable with. I get her by the shoulders and give her a gentle shake, under my hands, she's got bones like a baby bird's. "There is no_ us _. There is never going to be no_ us _. That addin' up for you, or are you the only hippie in the world who don't believe in free-lovin'?"_

_Tim's the one who worries about good or bad, right or wrong, but I guess I was never wired to think about all those big picture questions. I figure I've got one job at this point, and that's to look after my girl and my baby. And in one move, I've just utterly failed at both. Fucked another woman with JASMINE inked into my bicep, no less._

If you wanna be like me so bad, maybe instead of copyin' how I grease up my hair, you should give usin' your head a shot.

_"But you said you weren't happy with her—"_

_I pull my wallet out of the pocket of my discarded jeans, right in front of her, and start counting out bills. Like she's a hooker I hired, who didn't have the good sense to ask for cash upfront. "How much do you want?" I ask, and now I'm the one who doesn't have any sense, giving her the upper hand. "Ten, twenty?"_

_Why don't I promise her a pony, while I'm at it. She swings her legs as she sits on the edge of the bed; she looks like she could still be going to Will Rogers, for fuck's sake, and it's with liquid helium running through my veins that I really start to realize the power dynamic here, that I'm some bigshot drug dealer messing with a broad who's naive enough to think a one night stand makes her my steady. That there was ever the slightest chance in hell I'd run off with her. "I don't want your money... I just don't understand what's changed all of a sudden. You don't even want to be friends?"_

_My all-of-a-sudden sobriety. "Listen to me, honey," I say, and there's a curl of menace starting to creep into my tone. Find the teardrop under my eye like my finger's a compass, always pointing north. "This ain't a tattoo I got for fun, okay? It don't mean I love thunderstorms. I'm a gangbanger, a hood. You can't tell anyone about this, and you're not going to see me again." There's a threat hanging in the air. I let it stay right where it is. "Now you want that twenty dollars, or am I gonna have to make it fifty to get you off my back?"_

_She takes the fifty before I take back the offer. Smart girl._

_I get home around eight in the morning and find Jasmine crying on the couch in an afghan, and though there's no way she could, I'm struck by the fear that she somehow already knows, that I've been found out. I just stand there for a moment, like an idiot, before she gets up and throws her arms around me, clings to me as her tears soak my rumpled shirt. "I'm so sorry," she hiccups, "I'm—" She pulls back, her face splotchy and her eyes swollen like she's been socked. "You don't want to leave me, yeah? I didn't mean any of it... I don't know why I act like this, sometimes."_

_I don't even remember what we were fighting about, what the hell she's apologizing for. Guilt should be written all over me like stigmata bleeding on my body, marks from the cross, but there's nothing; I looked myself over in the dingy motel bathroom before I left, smoothed down my hair with tap water, checked for hickeys. I almost put my fist through the mirror when I had to stare at my own reflection. Maybe I should've._

_My confession dies inside my throat at just how wrecked she looks, and my courage abandons me entirely, if I ever had any to begin with. I kiss her temple, reach down to stroke her hair as her weight collapses into me. "No, I'm sorry," I say, because there's nothing to forgive, not now, at any rate. "I love you so much, baby, don't cry," because what else can I say? I'll love her until my breathing stops, and that at least, I know for sure._

_I fully intend to take this to the grave with me. I'll carry that burden for her, won't hurt her by trying to put it down like dropping a concrete block on her head. And for the next five years, even as I replay that night a million times in the back of my mind, I don't stop to think that as a married man? I didn't make a habit out of carrying around rubbers._

* * *

I come home a lot later than I should— wondered if I _should_ come home, period, if I can even show my face here again. Hell, I could get right back into my '76 Cadillac Eldorado, floor it, and not stop until I hit the Golden Gate Bridge, I think as I turn my key in the lock, cuss to myself fumbling with fingers that feel like they're coated in Crisco. Leave this shit behind and throw in all my chips on the chance that nobody will come after me, the way Angela and Ponyboy did. Then I remember that I'm branded like a cow, not only under my eye but all over my body, and there goes that plan.

In addition to being a liar, a moron, and a lowdown, ain't-shit cheater, I'm also a goddamn coward. The only way I'm leaving any of this behind is in a body bag.

"Daddy?" I about jump out of my skin when I hear the voice, residual paranoia getting to me; Mike rubs his eye with one of his fists as he steps into the hallway, and in his pajamas with his hair all messy, he looks even younger than usual. "Where were you?"

My heart clenches like it's being squeezed by a giant fist; he doesn't really call me that, no matter how much Jasmine tries to coax him, but he does sometimes, when he's upset or tired-out. I'm not close to my son. No matter how many years have gone by, I still can't shake the feeling that he's a kid brother or nephew I'm babysitting before his real daddy comes to pick him up. I crouch down to his level and thank God that I don't have any bloodstains on me, "ain't you supposed to be in bed, bub?" It's a question with no authority. I can't make him do nothing even if I wanted to.

"I ain't sleepy," he says with his mama's stubbornness. Then he yawns, and despite everything that's happened tonight, I fight a smile. I can still carry him, but he'll holler if I pick him up, so I just lead him into his room by the small of his back.

He's got everything in there a kid could want, and I do mean _everything_ , Luis spoils him absolutely rotten. Too bad that instead of playing with his Micronauts or the toy Rolls Royce I think might be street legal, except when Jasmine and I prompt him to in his presence, he's always got his nose in a book. I used to try to read to him, but my boy reached the extent of my reading level with _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_ — asked me why I took so long to sound out all the words, when he'd already read to the end of the page by himself. Talk about a blow to the ego, and I already knew I wasn't qualifying for Mensa.

"C'mon, get in," I say as I pull open the curtains on his canopy bed and tug a corner of his blanket off. "It's real late, yeah?"

"I don't need to be tucked in," he fusses when I pull the blankets over him again, smooth them down. "I'm too big."

I'm not gonna roll my eyes at my boy, but I come close as I rub his back— at least he doesn't object to that, his eyelids fluttering shut and his breathing steadying out. Maybe he is too old, sure as shit nobody was tucking me into nothing at his age, but Mike's motto since he could walk has been 'I'm too big'. That probably doesn't say much about my parenting. "What's this on your face?" I mutter— I didn't see it too well in the dark hallway, but I do now as I turn on his bedside lamp, the mark under his left eye. It looks like he drew on himself with—

"It's a teardrop," he says sleepily as he rolls over to face me. "Like you an' Tío Luis an' Tío Alberto have— Curly! Quit it!"

I lick my thumb and scrub hard at his cheek, the ink fading into my hand and becoming a watery smear on his skin. "What were you thinkin'?" I ask, and it's closest I've gotten to scolding him in years. "You even know what that means?"

I've really done it now, asked him to admit he doesn't know something— he scowls at me, his nose crinkling. "I do too know," he insists with all the self-importance he can puff himself up with, "Tío Luis explained it, I asked him. It means you have _fidelidad_ and that you'd do anything for your outfit."

Another hard scrub with the pad of my thumb gets the last bit of ink out of his pores, and it's only because of the residual high that I say what I do next. "It means you killed somebody, _pequeño_. You still want one?"

Tim and I weren't so much older than him, when we started learning to shoot. I've been living on borrowed time, on _his_ borrowed time, and no matter how hard I try to avoid thinking about the future, it's unavoidable right now.

He doesn't answer me, and I realize it's because he's fallen sound asleep, the quick way only little kids can. "Night, man," I sigh, and kiss the top of his head— his hair still feels as kitten-soft to me as it did when he was a baby, as I splay my palm over it. "I love you."

I don't know why I can't bring myself to say it when he's awake. Maybe because I never thought I'd live long enough for him to get attached to me, maybe because I'm the worst kind of role model and no kind of father. I can barely get a grip on raising one child—

And now I have another one out there? God help me. God help _her_.


End file.
